Settler mother and daughters shot dead

The Likud referendum always promised to aggravate tensions, but the slaughter that accompanied it yesterday was depressingly gruesome even for a people familiar with violence.

A bloodied, bullet-ridden stationwagon near a crossing from Gaza to southern Israel told of the brutal end of Tali Hatuel, 34, and her four daughters, aged from two to 11. The mother was eight months pregnant.

They were the first Gaza settlers to be killed since 2002, and the manner of their deaths may have hardened opposition to the pull-out - executed, as they were, by two Palestinian gunmen as they headed off to campaign against Ariel Sharon's plan to abandon their settlement of Gush Qatif.

The militants forced the car off the road and fired round after round at the wreckage at close range. Rescue workers said the children had bullet wounds to the head.

The stationwagon was riddled with bullets, its windows blown away. Blood seeped on to the brightly coloured pages of a children's book that had tumbled to the floor.

The gunmen fired on another car but the driver was able to reverse to safety, suffering light wounds. The shooters were then killed by Israeli soldiers, two of whom were wounded in the exchange of fire.

The gunmen first fired at an armoured car driven by a CNN crew, who were unharmed. The crew tried to prevent other cars from driving in the direction of the shooting but failed to stop the two in question.

Several thousand mourners, including the Israeli president, Moshe Katzav, attended the family's funeral in the southern town of Ashkelon. Ms Hatuel was a social worker who had counselled the families of those attacked by Palestinians.

Israel responded in robust fashion, pounding a high-rise building in Gaza City that houses Palestinian media outlets. Seven people were injured.

And later, Israeli missiles fired either from a helicopter or warplane killed four Palestinian militants in a car in Nablus, scattering their body parts over a wide area, and drawing a promise from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade of "a violent response very soon".

The Israeli military called the four "senior terrorists" and said they had been responsible for numerous attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers.